Mr. Clayton, It’s a Bit Late to Talk About "Civility," Don’t You Think?
Proposition 8 just passed in California, amending the state constitution to take the right to marry away from gay couples. And I will be blunt: I blame the Mormon church.
When the fight was just gearing up this summer it seemed like official Mormon involvement would be minimal, limited to a letter the Mormon prophet sent out to congregations, which stated the church’s position on gay marriage—guess what? they’re against it!—and urged members to “do all they could” to support the proposition. The letter caused a minor furor in online Mormon-adjacent communities, especially among ex-Mormons and those who supported gay rights, or who at least thought the Mormon church should keep its nose out of politics. Looking back at the post I wrote at the time, all I can think is how naïve I was to allow something so small upset me! Because what followed was much, much worse.
On October 8, 2008, the Mormon church really entered the fray with an anti-gay-marriage broadcast shown to BYU students and to congregations all over California. Involved in this thinly disguised political rally were four high-ranking Mormon “general authorities”:
- Russell Ballard, a former car salesman, who is now one of twelve “apostles” in the Mormon church leadership
- Quentin Cook, a former attorney, also an “apostle”
- David Bednar, a former business professor and educator, also an “apostle”
- Whitney Clayton, a former attorney and “President of the Seventy” in the Mormon church (basically one step below “apostle”)
During the broadcast, all four men made it clear that they were not interested in truth, regurgitating falsehoods that had already been debunked, trotting out the old conservative whine about activist judges, and repeating a definition of “tolerance” that you won’t find in any dictionary except the one in Mr. Ballard’s head. And then the kicker: the Mormon church would be asking thirty people in each California congregation to donate at least four hours a week for Yes on 8 grassroots efforts. With 1,367 congregations, that’s 41,010 volunteers! (
You can read a full transcript of the broadcast here.)
And they were as good as their word. Members were pressured to donate to Yes on 8, with many of the richer members being asked for a specific figure, usually at least a thousand dollars. (Estimates of what percentage of the Yes on 8 campaign was funded by Mormons range from 40% to 77%.) There is anecdotal evidence that Mormon leaders threatened to withhold temple recommends from members who didn’t support Prop 8, and at least one Mormon has been excommunicated for speaking out against it.
The slander, misrepresentations and lies continued throughout the campaign, both from Mormon pulpits and from the Mormon-bankrolled Yes on 8 campaign. And it worked! Five million people went to the polls in California two days ago and voted against full equality for their gay and lesbian co-citizens.
I am convinced that Mormon support and pressure made all the difference in the Prop 8 campaign. And now that it seems the Mormon church has won, now that they’ve managed to wrest the right to marry away from those presumptuous, uppity homosexuals, now that they’ve successfully enshrined anti-gay prejudice in the constitution of the State of California? Now they are asking for “civility, respect and love.” “We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on,” Whitney Clayton was quoted as saying today in the Salt Lake Tribune. “We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman.”
Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Clayton. You don’t get to ask for civility and respect and love now. You may not have ever raised your voice and you may not have ever called us faggots, but your actions and the actions of your cronies have been so egregiously wrong, so devastating to the lives of thousands, including children, that you don’t get to ask for anything anymore.
I don’t really blame individual members for believing what their leaders told them, or even for their involvement in canvassing and other grassroots efforts. I blame the Mormon leaders themselves. These are not stupid men. Many of them were practicing attorneys and law professors—they cannot possibly believe their own lying rhetoric when it comes to the legal and social consequences gay marriage would supposedly have. They cannot possibly be so blind, and they cannot possibly be so confused.
And so I have no other option but to believe that they are willfully misleading the faithful for their own ends. They are lying to and manipulating millions of people who look up to them as inspired spokesmen of god. And that is my definition of evil.
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November 6th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
And so I have no other option but to believe that they are willfully misleading the faithful for their own ends. They are lying to and manipulating millions of people who look up to them as inspired spokesmen of god. And that is my definition of evil.
Despicably evil. And I don’t know that I will ever forgive them.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Since leaving the church I have always suspected that they were manipulative, scary, power-hungry tyrants. I was just never sure until now.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:05 am
I am incredibly disappointed in the success of Prop 8, ashamed at how gleefully and unreflectively so many in the Church supported the initiative, and angry not only with the position the Church has taken, but the nonchalance with which the Church has cast aside prior revelation regarding freedom of conscience.
A question on a related note. KCPW played clips of Ruizika crowing about Prop 8, insisting that gay relationships are protected without marriage. She gave as her evidence the fact that only thirty or so couples have signed up for SLC’s domestic partnership registry–if homosexual rights needed more protection, they would have been more active signing up. While I have no respect for her insistence that homosexual relationships are adequately protected, I was wondering if readers here had any insight as to whether her statement about the registry rolls was true, and if so, why so few homosexual couples have taken advantage of it?
November 7th, 2008 at 2:29 am
I’m angry about this, too. I thought the Church’s campaign was thoroughly dishonorable.
Our day will come.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:23 am
This has me so pissed off. And up here in Idaho I swear, the mormon kids are just gleeful about it. It doesn’t even occur to them that they are taking rights away, they are just blindly following and they are just so happy that they won! I say kids, but really, I mean young college students, early twenties–oh, hell, younger than me but old enough to know better.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Derek, I’m not sure why so few gay couples have availed themselves of the mutual commitment registry. Perhaps it’s because it grants very few intrinsic benefits—visitation rights at SLC hospitals and family discounts at SLC-run facilities. Its main purpose is to demonstrate economic dependence to employers, but since so few SLC employers provide domestic partnership benefits I can see how that isn’t much of a draw. It also wouldn’t surprise me if national employers with SLC locations don’t require registration with the city before providing such benefits.
In any case, low registry numbers are hardly evidence that gay couples have “enough protection.” I’m sure if Ruzicka’s marriage were suddenly given the same excellent social, economic and governmental protection as a gay couple’s union, she would be heavily agitating to change that felicitous situation.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Just to clarify, I absolutely that the “they have the same rights” justification by the anti-homosexual marriage crowd is garbage. I don’t think it is possible to provide equal rights as long as the relationships are legally classified as a different beast.
November 9th, 2008 at 4:45 am
This argument against gay marriage,that it protects our chikdren, is ludicrous and non-sensical. The only children harmed are those gay children who are shown by society that there is something wrong with being gay. Some people who are members of other minorities complain that gays are not truly oppressed because it is a choice and against the bible. Here is an example of true oppression: Young gay people not only worry about societal consequences– but rejection FROM THEIR OWN FAMILIES. This is not easy to deal with. In fact, over 30% of teenage suicides are attributed to gay shame. I say shame on you for not supporting gay marriage.
Don’t mess with our ‘pursuit of happiness’
November 9th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Welcome to the blog, brian. I’m not sure who this comment is addressed to, since the topic of harm to children hasn’t come up in this thread yet. In any case, I agree that outlawing gay marriage doesn’t protect children, and I agree that any action against gays and lesbians has a devastating psychological impact on gay youth. However, not only gay youth are harmed in this case: thousands of children and teenagers, gay and straight, are being raised by same-sex couples across the nation. Relegating their parents’ unions to second-class status sends a terrible, degrading message to send them, above and beyond the economic and social dangers these families are exposed to without the protection of marriage. These are the young people who are most directly harmed by withholding marriage from same-sex couples.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
You are absolutely right, Sean. I certainly didn’t mean to exclude this aspect about children being raised by gays and lesbians. But in my zeal to make my main point, I was unclear. The ironic point that I was making is that it is the oppositions very own children, the ones they are seeking to protect, that are often harmed.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am
Something to look forward to:
I cannot imagine that the CA Supreme Court will change their stance on the unconstitutionality of this, and I wholeheartedly believe that they will strike this down just as they have before. I’m hearing good, positive things from people “in the know”. We should know in March 2009.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
[...] Mr. Clayton, It’s a Bit Late to Talk About “Civility,” Don’t You Think? Proposition 8 just passed in California, amending the state constitution to take the right to marry [...]